Thus I am somewhat of a fatalist about art, because it seems to depend upon a lucky union of conception and technical instinct.  The saddest proof of which is that many good and even great artists have not improved in greatness as their skill improved.  The youthful works of genius are generally the best, their very crudities and stiffnesses adorable.

The history of art and literature alike seems to point to the fact that each artistic soul has a flowering period, which generally comes early, rarely comes late; and therefore the supreme artist ought also to know when the bloom is over, when his good work is done.  And then, I think, he ought to be ready to abjure his art, to drown his book, like Prospero, and set himself to live rather than to produce.  But what a sacrifice to demand of a man, and how few attain it!  Most men cannot do without their work, and go on to the end producing more feeble, more tired, more mannerised work, till they cloud the beauty of their prime by masses of inferior and uninspired production.

November 24, 1888.

Soft wintry skies, touched with faintest gleams of colour, like a dove’s wing, blue plains and heights, over the nearer woodland; everywhere fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel; everything, tint and form, restrained, austere, delicate; nature asleep and breathing gently in the cool airs; a tranquil and sober hopefulness abroad.

I walked alone in deep woodland lanes, content for once to rest and dream.  The country seemed absolutely deserted; such labour as was going forward was being done in barn and byre; beasts being fed, hurdles made.

I passed in a solitary road a draggled ugly woman, a tramp, wheeling an old perambulator full of dingy clothes and sordid odds and ends; she looked at me sullenly and suspiciously.  Where she was going God knows:  to camp, I suppose, in some dingle, with ugly company; to beg, to lie, to purloin, perhaps to drink; but by the perambulator walked a little boy, seven or eight years old, grotesquely clothed in patched and clumsy garments; he held on to the rim, dirty, unkempt; but he was happy too; he was with his mother, of whom he had no fear; he had been fed as the birds are fed; he had no anxious thoughts of the future, and as he went, he crooned to himself a soft song, like the piping of a finch in a wayside thicket.  What was in his tiny mind and heart?  I do not know; but perhaps a little touch of the peace of God.

November 26, 1888.

Another visitor!  I am not sure that his visit is not a more distinguished testimonial than any I have yet received.  He is a young Don with a very brilliant record indeed.  He wrote to ask if he might have the honour of calling, and renewing a very slight acquaintance.  He came and conquered.  I am still crushed and battered by his visit.  I feel like a land that has been harried by an invading army.  Let me see if, dizzy and unmanned as I am, I call recall some of the incidents of his visit.